Playwright Quotes - Page 13

• We rely upon the poets, the philosophers, and the playwrights to articulate what most of us can only feel, in joy or sorrow. They illuminate the thoughts for which we only grope; they give us the strength and balm we cannot find in ourselves. Whenever I feel my courage wavering, I rush to them. They give me the wisdom of acceptance, the will and resiliance to push on.

  Helen Hayes

  Wisdom, Acceptance, Rely Upon

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• But as the Roman playwright Terence once wrote, From many a bad beginning great friendships have formed

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Great Friendship

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• I said it before and I’ll say it again: books are dead, plays are dead, poems are dead: there’s only movies. Music is still okay, because music is sound track. Ten, fifteen years ago, every arts student wanted to be a novelist or a playwright. I’d be amazed if you could find a single one now with such a dead-end ambition. They all want to make movies. Not write movies. You don’t write movies. You make movies.

  Stephen Fry

  Art, Book, Writing

  Stephen Fry (2014). “Making History”, p.95, Soho Press

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• I was first introduced to August Wilson in the 80s when Charles Dutton did Ma Rainey and James Earl Jones and Courtney Vance did Fences. I've long considered August Wilson to be one of the five greatest playwrights in American history.

  Denzel Washington

  August, Long, Firsts

  Source: www.theawesomemuse.com

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• The biggest inspiration for everything I do is, of course, my wife, playwright Ruth McKee.

  Brian K. Vaughan

  Inspiration, Wife, Ruth

  "Comics Q&A: Brian K. Vaughan". Interview with Jeff Jensen, ew.com. February 01, 2008.

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• Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.

  Peter Ustinov

  Food, Night, Men

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• By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.

  Peter Ustinov

  Doors, Today, Size

  Christian Science Monitor, 1962.

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• I wanted to be a director first to protect my writing. I'm a playwright and you don't need to protect your writing when you're in the theater because everyone's there to protect the writing. When I had an idea for a film that I really cared about as my own, I wanted to direct it, and then I immediately became interested in directing in and of itself because it's such a deep art. You suddenly have all these tools at your disposal to tell the story.

  Kenneth Lonergan

  Art, Writing, Ideas

  "When the world feels dangerous, films showing the human experience are key, directors say". Interview with Mark Olsen and Yvonne Villarreal, www.latimes.com. January 5, 2017.

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• You know, Hollywood sometimes tends to patronize the interior of the United States. As Horton Foote used to say, the great Texas playwright, that a lot of people from New York don't know what goes on beyond the South Jersey Shore.

  Robert Duvall

  New York, Texas, People

  "Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek Interview GET LOW". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. July 30, 2010.

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• Today we can say that at last the director writes the film. The image--its plastic composition and the way it is set in time, because it is founded on a much higher degree of realism--has at its disposal more means of manipulating reality and of modifying it from within. The film-maker is no longer the competitor of the painter and the playwright, he is, at last the equal of the novelist

  Andre Bazin

  Writing, Mean, Reality

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• Any actor, any playwright who's worked a life in the theater knows how to do things cheaply and quickly. It's just all by necessity. Invention is everything.

  Israel Horovitz

  Actors, Invention, Theater

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• The director was only invented in the nineteenth century. So directors have only been around for 200 year,s and playwrights have been around since Sophocles and Euripides.

  Sarah Ruhl

  Years, Directors, Century

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• I know all about improvisation and the free-form that mirrors the chaos of our time, but I do like to feel that the playwright has done some work before I got there.

  Jean Kerr

  Mirrors, Done, Chaos

  JEAN KERR (1970). “Penny Candy”

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• Most British playwrights of my generation, as well as younger folks, apparently feel somewhat obliged to Russian literature - and not only those writing for theatres. Russian literature is part of the basic background knowledge for any writer. So there is nothing exceptional in the interest I had towards Russian literature and theatre. Frankly, I couldn't image what a culture would be like without sympathy towards Russian literature and Russia, whether we'd be talking about drama or Djagilev.

  Tom Stoppard

  Drama, Writing, Russia

  Source: news.postimees.ee

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• I think in theater the playwright is king. Those words are unchangeable. They are the reason that everything else flows from.

  Greta Gerwig

  Kings, Thinking, Flow

  Source: www.moviesonline.ca

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• When you think about it, what other playwrights are there besides O'Neill, Tennessee and me?

  Mae West

  Thinking, Tennessee, Theater

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• I'm an actor and a playwright, and I don't earn much.

  Ellen McLaughlin

  Actors

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• I've taken [acting] class with Larry Moss, who's more kind of in the theater world, so he's really educated me about playwrights.

  Eva Mendes

  Taken, Class, Acting

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights, actors and audiences - a figure dreaded, and occasionally comic, but never welcome, never loved.

  Robertson Davies

  Passionate, Actors, Welcome

  Robertson Davies (1961). “The Personal Art: Reading to Good Purpose”, London : Secker & Warburg

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• ... actors of the first water are not more plentiful than playwrights of genius.

  Sarah Bernhardt

  Water, Acting, Genius

  Sarah Bernhardt (1924). “The Art of the Theatre”

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• Each religion is a brave guess at the authorship of Hamlet. Yet, as far as the play goes, does it make any difference whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote it? Would it make any difference to the actors if their parts happened out of nothingness, if they found themselves acting on the stage because of some gross and unpardonable accident? Would it make any difference if the playwright gave them the lines or whether they composed them themselves, so long as the lines were properly spoken? Would it make any difference to the characters if 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was really a dream?

  Lewis Mumford

  God, Dream, Character

  "My Works and Days". Book by Lewis Mumford. Chapter 2, 1979.

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• William Congreve is the only sophisticated playwright England has produced; and like Shaw, Sheridan, and Wilde, his nearest rivals, he was brought up in Ireland.

  Kenneth Tynan

  Rivals, England, Sophisticated

  Kenneth Tynan (1961). “Curtains: Selections from the Drama Criticism and Related Writings”

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• I did a lot of freelance desk publishing jobs when I graduated from college. I sort of earned a living doing that while I was writing plays, which was what I wanted to do. My hope was to become a playwright.

  Jason Katims

  Jobs, Writing, College

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• An actor and a [theatre] director are both what I would call interpreters of work. We interpret a work, just as a musician will interpret a composer's work, we interpret the work of a playwright. We are servants of the theatre and I've always believed that. We must serve what has been written, that's what we're there for.

  George Ogilvie

  Theatre, Musician, Directors

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• If I had not had music in my life, I would be the neurasthenic vision of the playwright.

  Marsha Norman

  Vision, Would Be, Ifs

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